JUAREZ -- Pastor Pedro Martín Nuñez doesn't hide the tattoos on his arms. In his line of work, he said, they open doors. And they do -- in a strange way.

A former gang member once saw Nuñez's tattoos and almost started a fight with him, thinking Nuñez was a member of a rival gang. On more than one occasion, federal and municipal authorities have detained Nuñez because of the marks on his arms.

For Nuñez, those incidents were opportunities to connect with people willing to listen to his message that lives dominated by crime can be turned around.

"People judge you by how you look. It's like a hook to get close to other people who are like we were," he said.

Nuñez's tattoos are permanent stamps that attest to his life sinking into the darkest depths of vice and violence. He spent most of his childhood in prison with his mother, who was convicted for the murder of his father. The brutal homicide of a rival gang member put him back behind bars when he was 19. He is 36 years old and has spent 21 years incarcerated.

More than a liability or an embarrassment, his tattoos today are instrumental in his current mission in life.

For the past 15 years, Nuñez has used faith to help turn around the lives of prisoners, gang members and addicts, a demographic at the root of the city's current social problems -- and one that Nuñez is uniquely qualified to reach.

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Nuñez, a short, stout man with green eyes that earned him the nickname "El Gatito" (the little cat), runs a Christian shelter, temple and dining hall in Zaragoza's Colonia Morelos. He mostly works in Southeast Juárez, an area known today for its gang problems and the absence of basic infrastructure such as schools and nearby hospitals.

His congregation is composed of around 60 people, most of them former prisoners, gang members and drug addicts. Nuñez said around 40 percent of them live nearby; the others travel from distant corners of the city to hear his sermon every weekend.

Luis Avila, 33, a former gang member, said Nuñez has become an example to him. When Avila met Nuñez two years ago, Avila had just been deported from the United States after spending 10 years in prison. He had been in gangs like the Mexican Mafia in Arizona since he was 11.

When he got to Juárez, he thought of getting a gun and stealing cars. Instead, he met Nuñez and decided to change.

"He makes you think," Avila said of Nuñez. "If he can change, I can also go that way, too. If he can get out, I can, too."

For people with a troubled past, like Avila, Nuñez represents a success story.

"His testimony is moving and tremendous, considering what he lived through in jail when he was so young, and what he suffered," said Armando Barrón, a former prison inmate who is now a Christian pastor and runs the children and youth shelter La Vida (The Life). "I was in drugs, but I didn't grow up in prison like him. I see him, and I'm marveled with what God has done with this boy."

Nuñez's life in prison began when he was 2, when his mother was convicted of stabbing Nuñez's father to death.

His mother, like his father, was an addict. His grandfather, also an inmate, sold drugs in prison. Instead of going to school, Nuñez delivered pills and other drugs to his grandfather's clients. He tried drugs for the first time when he was 9.

"The same curses that had haunted my family were now falling over me," he said. "I was practically being enveloped by the same monster that had a hold on them."

Nuñez left prison along with his mother when he was 10, but he didn't spend much time free. He went to a youth detention center 17 times on theft and drug-possession charges. He was sentenced as an adult for the first time when he was 16 and returned to prison for a year and a half.

Prison was like a game for Nuñez until his third conviction, this time for first-degree murder. The evening of his 19th birthday, a rival gang member challenged him: The first one to fall asleep would die. Nuñez won and killed the other young man. In an attempt to hide the victim's identity, Nuñez destroyed his head with a concrete brick.

"I've always thought I had a demon in me because a normal person doesn't do that," he said. "Growing up in prison with all those people without any scruples or feelings, I also became a person like that."

Nuñez was sentenced to 14 years in prison, where he began using cocaine and heroin. During that time, he stabbed and seriously injured another man and regularly stole drugs from small distributors inside prison. His sentence was increased to 18åyears.

He earned himself many enemies and, because of an unpaid debt, an attacker stabbed him six times in the back, arms and legs. He was paralyzed for three months and spent almost an entire year in recovery. The scars still show.

At age 21, after two suicide attempts and the death of his mother due to an overdose, he was told by a fellow inmate, "Christ loves you and can change your life." On top of a bathroom faucet with a rope around his neck, that phrase kept him from trying to kill himself a third time.

He found a job in prison, stopped using drugs and paid his debts. Nuñez became a bridge to reach out to the most dangerous and addicted inmates.

"I was like the worm in the hook that brought many toward the Lord," he said.

Nuñez left prison eight years ago on good behavior and settled on his current address in Zaragoza, where there were only two adobe rooms next to an empty house where his wife, also a former inmate and drug addict, used to sell drugs. The two rooms turned into a two-story building that now serves as a dining hall, dormitory and temple.

Nowadays, helping young people is a priority for Nuñez.

Nuñez is fixing the house next door and turning it into a halfway house for abandoned children and at-risk youths. Besides having three children of his own, Nuñez has adopted three youths, one of whom used to sell drugs and now is about to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree in psychology.

Nuñez travels throughout Mexico and the U.S. holding conferences for former drug members, and he said his work at home is still a challenge. The city's addiction problems, he said, began rising since drugs that used to travel for exclusive sales in the U.S. started staying in Juárez. Now poverty, family disintegration and the current wave of violence further the problem.

Teresa Almada, director of the youth services nonprofit Casa Promoción Juvenil, said Juárez has a great need for mentors who want to get close and listen to young people.

Even though all that is necessary is to have an honest interest in young people's problems, Almada said, the experience and testimony of someone who has already lived through gangs and addictions -- like Nuñez -- could greatly help connect with young people.

"I don't think that has to be a mentor's background, but it does help a lot because those that come from gangs do have a certain leadership" among other at-risk youths, Almada said. "It can be very useful to other young people to see another person that somehow has already been through those problems and has a lot to say."

Nuñez constantly seeks to find and save in others the lost young man he once was. In his sermons, he tries to convey to his parishioners the message that he, just like them, once needed and never received.

"First, you have to give them the love they need," he said. "Second, you have to help them recover the dreams they once had. And third, they have to recover the dignity they've lost. These are basic but very important points people need."

Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera can be reached at a.martinez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6129.

Photos by Jesus Alcazar / Special to the Times

Pastor Pedro Martin Nuñez leads prayer service at his shelter. He helps former gang members, recovering addicts and former prisoners, using religion to help guide them back into society.

Above left, Pastor Pedro Martin Nuñez runs a Christian shelter, temple and dining hall in Southeast Juárez. At left, he holds a photograph of three prisoners. Nuñez is in the middle and has been in and out prison for 21 years. The last time he went to prison was for murder.

Photos by Jesus Alcazar / Special to the Times

Above, Pastor Pedro Martin Nuñez helps a group of young people through a prayer service at his shelter for recovering addicts in Juárez. He is a member of a group of former criminals who have turned their lives around and are now helping others leave lives of crime. At left, the group attends service.